It's quite fun watching the TV coverage of Live8 gradually, slowly, bit by bit, not being caught up in the hype, the lies and the bullshit, digesting it in hourly or so chunks.
Chris Martin of Coldplay, mostly famous for marrying a Hollywood 'actress' announces Richard Ashcroft 'the greatest singer in the world'. I've nothing against Rick; indeed I have a Verve album. But, following on from Paul McCartney and Bono makes this a difficult claim to substantiate. Perhaps he could justifiably be called The Third Best Singer to Perform at Live8 prior to the arrival of Gerry and Jimmy. Not that snappy, though, is it?
A bit of pop-star-stupid hyperbole would not have bothered me greatly, (except that, sadly, Ashcroft proved himself to be less of a singer than even Dido) but Martin announces that Live8 is the single greatest thing ever organised in history. Um, no. It's a Rock Festival. He must be singularly stupid, or self-centred, or merely suffering from (drug induced?) amnesia if he can not actually remember the mobilisation by Non-Governmental and Governmental organisations in the aftermath of the Tsunami all of, oh, six months ago. How about the Berlin Air Lift, or the eradication of smallpox, or the siege of Leningrad, all of which took place within the lifetime of certain Live8 performers. History goes back further.
And then in interview, the aggregation of Coldplay managed to remind me why I decided, long before the first LiveAid, that it saves a lot of time to dislike men in their Twenties until they provide reasons otherwise. Just a short interview showed them to be arrogant, ignorant and self-centred. Arseholes.
So it was nice to see Travis, who came over as a fundamentally decent set of guys. They said what they had to, without being especially interesting, but there was no sign of 'me me me' ignorance. I suppose using such hyperbole makes Coldplay feel good about themselves. Such a pity; you would have thought fame and riches would be sufficient.
Poor Gwyneth.
Bu the biscuit goes to Keane. "We've been aware of the issues a long time because Richard Curtis, one of the organisers, was an early Keane fan." It would be comical if it wasn't so sad. Guess what folks, there are loads of people who have been aware of the issues for a lot longer, because they've made the effort to inform themselves. Remember the Drop the Debt campaign for the Birmingham G8? Remember the Jubilee Campaign. I know that some people are going to be fooled by the faux compassion, but not everybody, and some of those who aren't fooled are going to use modern media to say so.
I do hope that none of these acts continue the pretence of caring. They're pop stars, they're supposed to hedonistic and greedy. Performing three songs for fifteen minutes in front of a global audience of 3 billion is not altruistic. Some of them have a track record of doing more, and I won't deny that. Maybe some more will do something in the future. But, to be honest, I have a lot more respect for the legions of ordinary people who do something without fanfare, then posturing solipsistic popstars who would have been fools to turn down the best PR that money can't buy.
